And To Think That I Saw It On Paper Street
by loki-laufeyson-of-asgard
Summary: People are always asking me if I know Tyler Durden. What they don't ask is if I've ever fucked Tyler Durden. The answer to both questions is yes.


People are always asking me if I know Tyler Durden.

What they don't ask is if I've ever fucked Tyler Durden.

The answer to both questions is yes.

Actually, now that I think about it I guess people have indirectly asked me if I've fucked Tyler. Sometimes people approach me in the street, or at my job. These are not the usual crowd who used to approach me when they thought I was Tyler, or I guess I should say the people who used to approach Tyler—these are Bible-thumping, hard-working second-class citizens of the good old United States.

"Excuse me," they say, "are you Tyler Durden?"

Well, yes and no.

"Don't get smart with me," they might say. Or, "Watch out, he's got that schizophrenia."

Marla would be so jealous to realize I landed with the brain parasites, after all.

I don't want to cause any problems, I say.

"Then shut those clubs down," they say.

I shrug. It's out of my hands. I don't even know where most of them are.

It's usually at this point that I get a resounding, 'okay, go fuck yourself,' which to me isn't really a well-thought out solution, but who am I to question the authority of gods? I nod, smiling: Have a nice day, and I catch the city bus. I ride out to Paper Street. Tyler is usually waiting for me inside, or else he appears as I head up the stairs. I follow him into our room. We lay on the horrendous mattress together. I obey my orders. I fuck myself.

I am Jack's sated satisfaction.

How it all came to be:

After the buildings exploded, I was admitted to a psych ward for evaluation. I was placed on a 72-hour hold which turned out to be a complete farce because, as I lay in the white bed staring at the white ceiling in my white paper-thin outfit holding the white cup in my white trembling fingers, an aide walking by leaned in and whispered:

"Don't worry, sir. This is just a formality. We'll get you out of here."

I don't want you to, I whispered back, but he'd already moved on. He moved on, and soon so did I. I left the psych ward with medications I knew I'd never take and a paper signed by my doctor—sporting a garish black eye—stating I was fit to live and work and breathe in the real world. All around me people nodded; people whispered, "It's good to see you out, sir," and smiled at me with broken front teeth.

The first place I went was Marla's. We had a very long talk in her room. The dildo was still on her dresser staring at me in its polyurethane coating, veins bulging, head erect. I dug my hands into my thigh and told her the truth: about Tyler, about fight club, about all of it. When I was done talking she was quiet for a little while. Then she surprised me. She thanked me for telling her, and then she kissed me on the cheek. (The other one.) She kissed me, and she squeezed my hand, and as I was getting up to leave she said:

"I hope you find him."

I stared at her. But there was nothing else to say, and anyway she was shutting the door in my face. I had no choice but to walk down the hall, down the stairs, out the front door. I walked out of town. I didn't know where I was going until my feet carried me to Paper Street. It seemed like the worst possible decision at the time, since the last time I'd thought of the house was at the police station, where I'd given the address and the goings-on to the chief, but to my surprise it was still there as I headed down the damp curb. Still framed by factory smoke and dead streetlamps and nothing else, looming in catastrophic decay. The lights were out, as they had been when I'd first come. There were no police officers. No caution tape. No space monkeys.

(Later, I found out the space monkeys at the station had "convinced" our dear chief to let it go. I'm pretty sure that means he attends Remaining Men Together meetings now—or else he's joined fight club. I'm not sure which I'd rather.)

Anyway I went in that first night. As I ascended the stairs I half-expected (half-hoped?) to hear footsteps behind me; to hear that strange staccato laugh, or to smell cigarette smoke, or to feel his hand on my shoulder. But there was nothing. Not even when I brushed my teeth in the crusty sink did I see a glimpse of his face in the shadows. I rinsed my mouth out in rusty water, stripped down—I had only one set of clothes from the hospital, the sweat-and-blood-soaked ones I'd worn the night I shot us, and could only hope that the remainder of my clothes were still in the house somewhere—and stretched out on my old mattress. The box springs were sticking me in the back, and the blanket smelled like mold, but I was asleep within seconds.

I slept nearly twenty-four hours.

I woke with a mild erection and the urge to piss. After, standing over the toilet, I braced my hand against the stained wall and jerked myself off. At the crux of it I saw his face and bit through my lip as I came. For a moment it felt as though there was another person holding my dick. But when I opened my eyes I was alone.

I am Jack's strange urge to cry.

For a while there wasn't much to do. I stole newspapers from stands in the city every day and scanned the ads until I found a job I could do without any real backlash—a fry cook at McDonald's. My new manager and coworkers all sported yellowing bruises and busted lips. My manager winked at me on my first day and said I could work whatever hours I wanted for equal pay—or none at all. I ignored this. I wasn't Tyler. I wasn't going to be Tyler. I worked from eight to five. Then I caught the city bus back to Paper Street. I kept telling myself I was going to find a real place to live, but it seemed like a major effort for something that would only cost me money—Paper Street was free, and always would be. I collected books from thrift stores. I found my old clothes. When it rained, I turned off the lights in the basement.

I scanned the newspapers and the TV stations after nights when I'd slept extra hard. There wasn't anything, and gradually I allowed myself to relax.

He came back six months after everything.

I walked in from a shift and sensed immediately everything was different, even before I saw him lounging against the sink in his lavender bathrobe. He was eating an apple. His hair had grown back.

"Took your time, Psycho Boy," he said, by way of greeting.

What are you doing here?

"Aw, and here I was thinking you were missing me."

Well, I wasn't, so you can leave.

He scratched at the back of his head. "Think I'll stay," he said. He tossed the rest of his apple into the trashcan. He took a step forward. He had this weird, dangerous look in his eyes. "What're you gonna do about it, Psycho Boy?"

I knew what he wanted. He wanted me to hit him. I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction. I folded my arms and glared at him. Get, I said, out.

"Ask me nicely."

Get out of my fucking house, Tyler.

"That's definitely not nicely."

I pointed at the door. He shook his head. He was smiling crookedly. "Anyway, it's my house," he said. "I found it first. So if anyone should leave it's you."

You left first, I said, before I could stop myself.

He stared at me.

I woke up and you were fucking gone, I said. I looked for you. I never fucking talked to Marla about you. I don't know why the fuck you just up and—

He was still staring at me. "You have to ask three times," he said.

I'm not gonna play your fucking games, Tyler.

"This isn't a game," he said. "It's basic etiquette—"

I hit him. My fist connected with his jaw. He started laughing, his bright manic laugh.

Is this what you wanted? I asked. My arm was shaking.

"This is what we want," he said, and I hit him again. His lip split on his jagged front tooth.

_We_ don't want anything, I said. _We're_ nothing. _We're _done.

He was still fucking laughing. His shoulders were shaking as he dripped blood onto the tile floor. "You keep telling yourself that."

I said it three times, I snapped. Isn't that the rule?

Tyler stopped laughing. He stared at me again, calculatingly. Then he hit me, too, so that my head snapped backwards. He slammed me into the counter and then we were on the floor, throwing punches. His blood was in my teeth, mine in his hair. My knuckles ached, and so did my shins where he kept kicking at me. He was trying to get me pinned so he could aim kicks at my ribs and I grabbed him by the shoulders, threw him against the ground.

I did everything for you, I screamed. Every _fucking_ thing you asked, Tyler. And you _still fucking left me._

Then it got really quiet. I guess I hadn't meant to add _me,_ but my head was aching because he'd slammed it against the floor at one point, and I kept feeling my tooth where it had come loose in the back of my mouth.

"You shot me," he said, finally. "I don't know any better directive of 'fuck off' than that."

I leaned to my side, spit blood. I couldn't answer him. For a while we both lay there, half in each other's laps, staring at each other. One of my eyes was swelling shut and there was blood coming into my vision from a cut in my eyebrow but I could still see his expression perfectly well. Unbidden the image came to my mind of what I'd done the first morning. Who I'd thought of. I tamped it down, I buried it next to Bob in the garden, but he caught it. Of course. Of fucking course.

"What's that?"

It's nothing, I tried.

"'Left me,'" he repeated, slowly, like he was just getting something.

Tyler—

He gripped my jaw in his hand. "We're so fucked," he said, and then he kissed me. He tasted like blood and cigarettes, and it should've made me gag but instead what it made me do was twitch in my pants, and then shove myself forward so I could get a better grip on him. I bit his lower lip. Our tongues were in each other's mouths. I couldn't get my hands on enough of him. His fingers were cold when they slid up my shirt and over the bruises on my back.

"So gone for me," he breathed out against my mouth. Embarrassed I squirmed a little away and he caught me around my waist, grinning:

"Good thing I am too."

Something short-circuited in my chest. To disguise it I tugged on his hair. He made a surprised, caught sound in his throat, and pushed me back against the floor—more gently this time. We rutted together, half in our jeans, half in our shorts, until we came—no finesse, no real excellent timing. Just the two of us, feeling like static, my eyes hot with exhaustion and else. His mouth on my neck. Me shuddering beneath him. His hand trembling in mine.

He washed the blood off my skin later. His hands were gentle. When we went to bed it was in his room, on his shitty mattress, with his arm around my waist. I woke up alone, panicked for five seconds, then looked in the doorway and found him watching me.

"You're a wreck," he said, fondly. "I'm downstairs making us breakfast."

I am Jack's tightening throat.

Since then it's been the same way. He doesn't do anything that gets us in trouble—he's content, he says, just to have me. Sometimes he shows up at my work, sitting in one of the booths, drinking orange juice, calling obnoxious things to customers. Sometimes he's reading a book from our house, eyes flitting across the page beneath his sunglasses. My manager never says anything if I take five minutes to go sit with him, knocking our feet together, asking him what page are you on, what do you think? He thinks it's amusing how many people still show up with bruises and bloody noses. He says it'll die out eventually. I'm not so sure, but it doesn't matter much to me. We're looking for new employment elsewhere. A bookstore, maybe. Somewhere quiet, where things can go on in the shelves.

At night, before we crawl into bed together, I still hold his ankles so he can do his sit-ups. The only difference is now sometimes I stroke over his skin with my thumb, so that his foot jerks into my lap, and he grins at me from the floor, crooked, wanting.

"God, IKEA boy," he says, "you sure are good at dismantling."

I am Tyler's laughing, kiss-slick mouth.


End file.
